In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we report from the stage at the biggest healthcare conference of the year, look at the norovirus vaccine pipeline, explore the health impacts of the California wildfires, and more to get it in your inbox. subscribe here.
Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
Sabout 8000 people descended on San Francisco for one of the healthcare industry’s biggest events this week: the 43rd annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. The event comes at a time when the industry has been volatile. It’s been just six weeks since the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and security was tight at the conference with a wall of armed police officers standing guard at the Westin St. Francis. Even so, eleven major companies, including all the major health insurers, pulled out. Meanwhile, uncertainty reigned as the nation leaned toward the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, bringing with it the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the country’s top health official.
The conference is usually a hotbed of deals and a flurry of announcements coincided with it. Most notably, Johnson & Johnson announced it would buy Intra-Cellular Therapies, whose drug Calypta is approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar-related depression, in a $14.6 billion deal. Eli Lilly also signed a major deal, agreeing to buy Scorpion Therapeutics, which has an experimental oral therapy for breast cancer, for up to $2.5 billion. GSK is buying oncology biotech startup IDRx for $1 billion. And PE firm New Mountain Capital is buying software platform company Machinify with a plan to combine it with three other recent acquisitions to create a single software company worth about $5 billion.
In a presentation at the conference, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan told investors the company was “completely open” to M&A with the cash to do deals. “We’ve seen more activity here in our funnels and our markets,” Danaher CEO Rainer Blair added in the biotech and diagnostics company’s presentation. However, he noted that “estimates are still a bit elevated.”
A potential tailwind for drug M&A: an oncoming patent cliff. Latest reporting from Statistics noted that patents for dozens of brand-name drugs, including Keytruda, Eliquis, Jardiance and Opdivo, will expire by 2033, potentially costing major drugmakers more than $400 billion in lost revenue — leave open the possibility that affected companies may try to buy their way out of this downturn.
Moderna has the best stomach flu vaccine
getty
Emany yearssomewhere between 19 and 21 million Americans suffer from gastroenteritis (aka the “stomach flu”), most often caused by a group of pathogens called noroviruses. These infections lead to hundreds of thousands of hospital visits and hospitalizations, as well as approximately 900 deaths, each year. This winter, norovirus infections are particularly bad in the US, according to the CDC, which is recording its highest outbreak numbers in a decade. Much to the surprise of parents, teachers and cruise ship enthusiasts, there are no approved treatments for norovirus infections, nor is there any vaccine against it. A treatment for norovirus is unlikely to be developed because the viral infection usually lasts only about a day or two, making it difficult for regulators to demonstrate a benefit. Additionally, the primary complication leading to hospitalization is dehydration, which is easily treated with IV fluids.
This makes a vaccine the most promising way to fight norovirus right now. There are currently three vaccine candidates moving through the clinical pipeline in human trials right now, and the furthest along is Moderna, which has developed a norovirus vaccine with the same mRNA technology as the one for Covid-19. Being first to market offers a huge opportunity, as annual virus infections cost the global economy around $60 billion, including both direct healthcare costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity. Moderna estimates that a norovirus vaccine has a total addressable market of about $3 billion to $5 billion.
Read more here.
HEALTH AND PUBLIC HOSPITALS
The fires in Los Angeles have been a nightmare, causing at least 25 deaths and the destruction of at least 12,000 structures. They are also a public health concern as inhalation of toxic fumes can lead to serious lung damage. The fires have also highlighted Southern California hospitals, health clinics, first responders and nursing homes. At least one clinic, a Providence branch, burned down, while medical offices were closed and routine appointments canceled.
Erik Wexler, who took over as CEO of Providence Health System on Jan. 1, said Forbes in an interview at the JP Morgan health care conference in San Francisco, that more than 1,000 of its caregivers had been displaced from their homes and that he was prepared to evacuate his hospitals in Los Angeles if necessary. “We’ve been on the verge of evacuating, in Santa Monica in particular,” he said. “If you are in a mandatory evacuation, you have four to six hours to evacuate. If we were in a recommended evacuation zone, we would probably evacuate.” At the time we spoke Monday, her location in Santa Monica was about 10 blocks outside the recommended evacuation zone.
As of Tuesday night, the fires continued to rage and forecasters warned of strong winds again on Wednesday after a brief respite.
DIGITAL HEALTH AND IT
Artificial intelligence chip powerhouse Nvidia announced a handful of healthcare collaborations at JP Morgan. With clinical research company IQVIA, she is developing customized foundational models and AI agents. It will work with genomics giant Illumina to provide AI products for analyzing genome data and other sequence information. Illumina will also use Nvidia hardware to power its Dragen analytics platform. The company announced that it will also partner with the Mayo Clinic to develop AI solutions that can help discover new cancer treatments and diagnostic tools. “We’re on a mission to improve patient care, increase access, and together we’re going to write the next chapter in medicine,” Nvidia vice president of healthcare Kimberly Powell told reporters at a press conference.
Also at the conference: nVision Medical founder Surbhi Sarna announced that her new company, Collate, has emerged from the heist with $30 million in seed funding and a valuation of over $100 million. The company aims to use AI to solve one of the life science industry’s biggest headaches: paperwork. Her company is developing tools that help automate document production for things like the clinical trial process, product development and manufacturing.
MEDTECH
The FDA has granted 510(k) clearance to ScreenDx, an algorithm developed by diagnostic AI startup Imvaria that can be used to help doctors diagnose interstitial lung disease from CT scans. The agency’s move comes about a year after the agency scrapped Fibresolve, another algorithm that can diagnose lung fibrosis based on biomarkers.
also: Brooklyn-based Cresilon announced this week that Traumagel, its device that can stop heavy bleeding almost instantly, is on the market after being cleared by the FDA last summer.
BIOTECH AND PHARMA
Pharmaceutical giant Lilly announced it is teaming up with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to launch the Biotech Ecosystem Venture Fund to “focus on advancing new drug development, enabling new modality platforms and scaling health technologies in development”, according to a statement a16z. The fund will be managed by the VC’s Bio + Health group, which is now led by Vineeta Agarwala, who took over the role last month when the group’s previous head, Vijay Pande, moved internally to an AI-focused role.
DEALS OF THE WEEK
The New Year is starting with a bang when it comes to venture capital. Recent days have seen multiple 9-figure funding rounds, including London-based Verdiva Bio, which raised $410 million to fund new GLP-1. It’s not the only new company to launch recently: There’s also Ouro Medicines, which raised $120 million to develop T-cell engagement, and cardiovascular startup Kardigan, with a $300 million Series A round.
Healthcare AI startup Innovaccer raised a $275 million Series F round, while UK-based AI startup Cera Care raised a $150 million mix of equity and debt. Tune Therapeutics raised a $175 million Series B to continue development of its epigenetic editing portfolio. Another big one: diagnostics company Geneoscopy raised a $105 million Series C round.
WHAT ARE WE READING
Hospitals are likely to see slower revenue growth in 2025 due to increased spending and reduced demand.
On leaving the FDA, Robert Cardiff makes no apologies – and warns of layoffs. The head of CDER Patrizia Cavazzoni has also announced that she will resign from the agency.
Dementia cases in the US will increase in the coming decades, researchers say.
The Federal Trade Commission’s second interim staff report on pharmacy benefit managers found significant premiums for drugs used to treat HIV and cancer.
An international commission says obesity should be assessed in a way that goes beyond body mass index.
FOR FORBES
